A payment instrument issuer invests substantial resources to correctly identify which merchant is associated with each payment transaction. Payment transaction records are typically forwarded to the payment instrument issuer network by the merchant acquiring bank (“Acquirer”) associated with a merchant in determining whether to approve or disapprove of a transaction. Though on its face, this may appear to be a trivial task, often, records of transactions forwarded to the payment instrument network list solely an address, a phone number, or a unique number known only to the Acquirer in seeking approval, and little information may exist as to the merchant that originated the transaction.
As a brief overview of the process of completing a transaction, as payments are processed through a payment instrument network, a payment instrument holder or customer (associated with a credit card, debit card, ATM card, electronic wallet, transponder device, NFC-enabled smart phone, or similar payment instrument existing currently or yet to be invented) makes a payment to a merchant or withdraws money from an ATM associated with a transaction acquiring device (such as a point-of-sale device accepting credit cards). An Acquirer seeks approval for this transaction by retransmitting certain data to a payment instrument network associated with a payment instrument issuing bank. If approval is appropriate, a reply message is transmitted from the payment instrument issuing bank to the Acquirer which is then forwarded to the merchant indicating the transaction is approved. Relevant technical standards governing this process are discussed in ISO 8583, and that document is incorporated herein in its entirety.
Historically, even though payment instrument issuing banks are tasked with approval or disapproval of a transaction, payment instrument issuing banks do not have access to all the details regarding the transaction sometimes even including the name of the merchant, the location of the transaction, and other miscellaneous details. In practice, however, various data mining techniques are available to determine a large amount of information regarding the transaction. Such mined data is useful to both the customers and payment instrument issuing bank in fraud prevention, potential risk associated with a transaction, actuarial assessments of transactions, and many other ways.
Often, however, matching of the merchant where a transaction was entered with the payment instrument used in entering a transaction requires a significant commitment of employee time for the payment instrument issuing bank. Dozens of employees can be employed full-time combing through data and making connections, even with the help of computers. Accordingly, there is a continuing need for a method, system, and software product for properly matching payment transaction records processed through a card network to a merchant.